--XXXVII--
MONDAY
8:47 AM
Northwest of Windcreek
Find a sharp object. Survive.
I took a deep breath- at least the deepest possible breath I could- bent down, placed my fingers on the edge of the mutated wood shard.
This is a joke, I lied to myself.
--
Nightingale
Day #16
Subprocedure Twenty
"I can't breathe."
The girl behind me was gasping. Screaming and gasping, the rope of deep velvet polyethylene and nylon wrapping and tightening slowly around her neck and shoulders. Crushing them, but only as slowly as the torturers wanted.
Why? Why did they pick her?
Because I volunteered to be the one "tested" on, and then they intentionally selected the other child across from my cage, instead.
That didn't mean I was spared; I was one of fifteen other prepubescent humans, none of us (save, perhaps, for Kaylee Ann Davenport) ever having enough to eat, not once in our lives- unless perhaps the food shops in Vicinity Two had any wastage they couldn't take to the collectors in time; anything that went past the actual demand and was about to expire, things they had to throw out.
Almost all people from the Lowdown, and most people from the Vicinities, simply hated those that were from the Suburbs, or from mainland U.S..
Personally, I didn't resent any of the rich folks- with the understanding that there is no good thing that does not take work. I supposed it was another thing that the people from the Lowdown found so different about me; I simply didn't hate or didn't resent. For them, it was so easy; so natural- to simply live in resentment or bitterness than to learn from those that might show more capability.
But I did renounce anyone that spoke of hunger like it was something of entertainment.
That said, I hadn't eaten, except for a bottle of chlorinated water and an expired MRE they were generous enough to give me through the thin iron bars. I was still vomiting.
"Charlotte Miller," read the name on the tag of the girl choking to death behind me.
A hologram of a man appeared in front of us in the center of the pit, smack dab in the middle of the concrete and macadam. Spotlights, huge, bright white beams of light- twice the compass and dimension of the glass fish bowl from my science classroom (the same science classroom where Kaylee and I always partnered together) in terms of their diameter- promenaded around us; blinding gyroscopic lights in this dance to the death.
The hologram of the man- his eyes covered by two-way glasses, his hair covered by some kind of expensive black fedora which almost no one who I knew at the time could ever afford to buy- and his chain of blue diamond and gold, shined in the high-quality fakeness of the intangible image. The man himself was about fifty feet above us and then about twenty yards laterally behind me, and safe behind his multi-layered walls of FR4 laminated fiberglass and inhumanity.
The girl behind me croaked, like a crow's caw, and I heard what sounded like snapping of bone.
I'd be next if I didn't win; I'd be next if I didn't survive.
The man's hologram seemed to look at Kaylee Davenport, who was one of the fifteen remaining in this test.
"That'll be you next," the man said, his voice some strange tone and inflection, still sounding like the disembodied, afflictive, ear-destroying voice of defilement; of corruption and of evil itself- a voice I learned to listen for and knew to recognize early from my days in the Lowdown, though this man's was slightly more tolerable. "If your little puppy boyfriend..." He turned slightly, looked over his shoulder... at me? "Can't do what needs to be done."
All at once, arms- either human arms or arms of some sort of human-like monster, or at least to me that's what they felt like- took hold of me, from behind.
I only barely remember, but I think for just one fraction of a second, I saw the monster's face; the face of whatever grabbed me. And I remember, because he looked like the friend I went to school with; the only other person who remembered my birthday the year before, besides Kaylee or her brother.
"You're a nice person, and you shouldn't do other people's homework," he told me, as he gave me the pudding and the banana from his lunch bag. And a slice of chocolate cake. "My mom made this," he told me. "I told her to save one for my best friend at school."
His name was Carter. I never saw his face again after the monster Carter stuck the needle into my neck, two seconds after he grabbed me.
--
Tears stung in my eyes, and they were dark red- blood red. I could feel the needle buried in my neck and wanted to do something, anything- but for those few seconds I was unable to move. I remember shutting my eyes, and hearing something snap- maybe something in my body; maybe something in Charlotte Miller's body. I could no longer tell. I was still trapped, in the arms of a friend I once knew; the one that gave me a brownie and a slice of cake.
"Your friend's not a killer," I heard the man's voice say. I saw almost nothing, barely anything but dark red. I'm not sure who exactly he was addressing. But I tried to blink a few times and saw he was still looking at Kaylee. There was an awful, absolutely horrible pause where all I heard was Charlotte's ragged wails of pain. "But I heard he does what he has to."
I remember hearing the strange man's laughter, echoing back and forth, all over the cavernlike walls around us- as Carter tossed my diminutive body straight onto the ground, hard. What little air I had in me during the struggle was knocked dead right out of my lungs; I was gasping but felt like no air would enter my body. The only indication of what was up or down was that my hands were on the dusty graphite floor. I blinked, rapidly, desperately trying to slowly regain whatever degree of visual perception I could. I looked to Kaylee, who was, literally, a shade of light green- and called her name.
"Kayles," I said, my voice merely some kind of pain-induced caw mixed with all of the panting, "Help."
No response.
Much weaker than usual, I pulled the syringe needle savagely out of my own neck, the buried end still shining with some kind of metallic dark purple, almost like some of those little orchids I helped Kaylee and the custodian-slash-gardener lady water or sometimes prune, back in school, in the mornings after my every night of abuse. This little activity was a small light; one that waited always at the end of each and every one of the 5,000 tunnels I was forced to walk through on a nightly basis. Unless it was snowing, of course. Cold, shiny, teal and turquoise. Sam Shilberg was someone I met years later, and one of the very first things I said to her was that her eyes were just like the Overwoods snow.
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My fingers scraped the dirt, the needle now a blurry violet stick on the end of a plastic syringe lying on the ground, in yet another now-familiar puddle of my own plasma. I didn't remember bleeding. I didn't remember dropping the syringe, either.
What I did remember was what happened next: a rattling sound, like sewing needles and buttons inside a circular, empty, metal tin for sugary and buttery biscuits- the ones I saw in magazines in the school library and in the massive garbage dumps back in the Lowdown, where I sometimes stole my dinner from. The sound was behind me, and I turned not to find the monster Carter, but to find some kind of corpse- but a walking one. A set of bones and flesh with no head, limbs in awkward and bothersome angles, twitching and snapping at random.
This was not something that even the most archaic of dictionaries had any words for. Not to me. Maybe walking wasn't the best word. Maybe gravitating. Pulling itself towards me. The other children were gone; there was nothing there but me, and moving, crackling, disfigured cadavers. The gyroscopic motion of the lights slowed, and then flickered. They were no longer white but instead red; red, and everything else- save for the bodies- was some kind of dreary, bleak gray, and black.
Deep red light and mutilated cadavers were all I saw as I fought for my life yet again; for however long that particular fight was.
What I knew at that moment was that a fight of even five minutes felt like eternity, if all you knew was that you had absolutely nothing anymore, but the primal, animal part inside you that begged to survive even as you consciously wanted only to escape.
I felt something- to this day I'm still unsure what- some kind of, perhaps, mind control, hands wrapping around my very skull and turning, though what I felt was not a physical torment but one that told me that what I had to do was to grab a knife and then do the very opposite of what I wanted most; what I wanted most was to harm myself. Not anything else or anyone else; myself. The lights flickered blood and the mutilated specters- now multiple of them- cracked their own ribs as they all danced towards me.
"Dance, Danny! Dance, my boy, dance!" screamed a voice that was simultaneously too many octaves too low and also too many octaves too high, at once. Was it the man's voice? The man in the fedora? Was it Kaylee's? Who else was around that might speak at all? The girl, who was my age, who was being choked to her death? I didn't remember seeing anyone. Suddenly, Charlotte Miller was in front of me, her neck snapped, her shoulders both severely dislocated, her eyes open and staring straight at me. One moment, she was nowhere; not nearby or in the periphery- then without blinking, she was there. In her hand she held a razor blade. She offered it to me.
I felt nothing but guilt.
Guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt.
If Kaylee was reading my mind from wherever she was, she either didn't come in to stop me from what I was going to do, or she wasn't able to.
Then Charlotte Miller spoke.
To me, it was surprising, and frightening enough, that she spoke at all; that she spoke to me. But the words she spoke made even less sense.
"Survive," she said to me. There were tears in her eyes. "Survive for us."
I took the blade and held one of her hands, tight. But I felt nothing- nothing. No pain. I could take no pain; I could hold her, or press my hand to her skin all I wanted- but I could not save her. I could not soothe her, soften the pain, take away the suffering which she did not ask for, did not deserve.
She was gone.
How do you take pain from someone who's died? And because of you?
Something liquid ran from my eyes; this time, it was water, not blood.
"Don't dance with them," she said, "don't go with them, don't follow them."
That was when I felt it-
Something unearthly, unreal, bizarre, something that to me was beyond harrowing- beyond frightening. My head snapped backward, one of my arms circled in some kind of ghastly, horrendous, disgusting motion. I had no idea what sick idea of satisfaction that was to anyone. My legs walked, a crooked, unnatural motion- toward a chair. A chair with ropes on it.
A girl's voice spoke, once more. I was, at that point, unsure if it was Charlotte Miller, or if it was some other girl, perhaps even Kaylee. Whoever it was, she was yelling at me like her life depended on it; the voice was screaming at me.
"Don't follow them!" it said.
"Don't let him turn you into another one of him," said another voice- one I recognized.
I shut my eyes from the blood and brutalness, from the morbidness, the violence.
That other, second voice, was my own.
Then a third voice rang out, the voice of the man behind the glass. The man with the fedora.
He always wore a belt. He always wore the buttoned kind of shirt. Sometimes, he wore a tie. Occasionally, a suit.
Not the first abuser I'd come across, and not the first by a long, long, long shot. But at that time, the man who I could not sleep with... but the only one I could sleep with. No other bed was warmer.
Because there was no other bed.
"Welcome to my mind, telepath!" the man said to me. I didn't know if he was proud of it or just happy to be able to manipulate me like he always did. It was almost as though I could even hear him grinning. "Dance with me!"
I stared at the razor blade in my hand, and looked at Charlotte. She was there, still. In front of me, almost protecting me- as though she were some kind of invisible wall from the many mutilated, headless, broken cadavers and skeletons, which still moved; eerie marionettes, just calling me, begging to make me join them, and begging to make me become just another one of them. But they stopped pursuit wherever she stood.
Had I only known what they were going to do...
She looked at me and I looked back; I was ready to fight to survive again and yet I was done. This girl, who was no older than I was, no better and no worse than I- was killed. Lifeless. Because of a decision that I made. I knew her shoulders were dislocated or broken, I knew she was choked to her death- but I also knew she was dead and so I did what would no longer hurt her: I wrapped my arms around her. I sobbed, I remember speaking my next words with only heartache, desolation, despair, as my arms held on to her broken body. But she spoke first.
"I don't have much time," the girl said, parts of her body- her fingers, her wrists, parts of her face- slowly deteriorating, turning to dust, falling off and simply being blown away as though she was evaporating into some nonexistent wind.
"I'm sorry," I said, as I sobbed, into her broken shoulder and into her face which was slowly, slowly vanishing, "I'm sorry," I repeated, and then again, "I'm sorry I couldn't save you." Now, she wasn't the one who was choking, I was. Though I wasn't taking her pain, or desperately trying to free myself from a choking tangle of torture. "I didn't mean to-"
"Well, now you need to save yourself," she interrupted. "Do it for us," she said. "For all of us."
"For all of who?"
She smiled at me, before she vanished.
"Goodbye, Danny."
"For all of who?!"
Kaylee's voice.
"For all of the good out there, Danny. We have a lot to make right. Grab that handle," she said.
Tangleweed, stringweed, Kaylee's whipvine, poison Welwitschia arrows were flying all around me as Kaylee defended me from our ex-fellow survivors. They were now all mutated. At the time, I didn't know that all the greenery that was defending me was actually Kaylee's work. At the time, I didn't really understand our powers, or even telepathy. I still don't, but as far as the plants attacking for us, it didn't take too long for me to pick up on what was happening. She looked at me- her brown hair a mess just like I was- and then nodded toward some sort of blue lever, with a white flashing light, far away and mounted high up on one of the cavern-type walls.
The other voice came back. The evil one.
From the man up above us, we heard his laugh, again- though perhaps one percent less threatening now that my mind had cleared from whatever mind control or whatever poison, or both, he had put me under. And, slowly, his laugh started to bother me less and less.
"Did you have fun dancing for me, Danny boy?!" He laughed, a mad, depraved, immoral laugh. But not too unlike the laughter of some from the Lowdown. "Come on, dance for me!"
I shook my head, and as I felt the coldest shiver- colder than anything that the human imagination can possibly even conceive- run through me, I remember I had one thought.
Kaylee read it; perhaps the man did, too- but I spoke it aloud.
"I will not dance for a devil."